VISHAKHAPATNAM: TD national general-secretary Nara Lokesh has raised a hue and cry when a remand prisoner died of dengue fever in the Rajamahendravaram Central Jail where his father Chandrababu Naidu was lodged in an alleged skill development scam since Sept 10. Lokesh alleged that the YSRC hatched a conspiracy to see that his father too met with a similar fate.
But it is noted that Chandrababu Naidu as chief minister from 2014 to 2019 could not complete his “mission” to eradicate mosquitoes from the state.
It was at a meeting Naidu as CM held with the district collectors in Sept, 2016 that he announced the State government would work to make the state “100 per cent mosquito-free’’ in another two years -- by the end of 2018.
“I have launched a war on mosquitoes and the officials have to work towards achieving the goal. Sri Lanka has achieved the distinction of being a mosquito-free nation and the WHO has declared it so,” Naidu had said.
Notably, the incidence of malaria in Andhra Pradesh was as high as 23,673 cases in 2016. It was at 21,072 in 2014, the year he took over the CM. The following year, it was at 25, 042, the highest in the decade. The cases marginally declined in 2017 to 16,972 and came down to 6,040 in 2018.
“Even the 6, 000 cases was high for a small state like AP,’’ noted a public health official. The official said though malaria cases were reduced, the dengue cases went up the same year.
However, a positive change was seen under the present YSRC government. In 2019, the year Jagan Mohan Reddy took over as CM, the caseload was 3,104. It went down to 2,027 in 2020, to 1,315 in 2021 and to 1,744 in 2022.
